About this episode

Matt Turck interviews Zico Kolter about the risks and safety measures associated with frontier AI models.

What actually happens before a frontier AI model gets released — and who decides whether it is safe enough? In this episode of The MAD Podcast, Matt Turck sits down with Zico Kolter — OpenAI board member, Head of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon, and co-founder of Gray Swan — for a deep conversation on the real risks of frontier AI. They discuss how OpenAI’s safety oversight works before major model releases, why more powerful models do not automatically become safer, how jailbreaks and prompt injection expose real weaknesses in AI systems, why AI agents dramatically expand the attack surface, and where frontier AI is headed next. A clear, practical discussion on OpenAI, AI safety, AI security, AI agents, frontier models, red teaming, reinforcement learning, and the future of AI governance. (00:00) Intro (01:32) OpenAI board role and Safety & Security Committee (03:53) How OpenAI reviews major model releases (05:33) OpenAI’s preparedness framework explained (09:46) Are frontier AI models getting safer? (12:33) Why AI safety does not come from scale (15:23) The four categories of AI risk (19:38) Doomerism vs accelerationism in AI (24:11) The six-month AI…

People in this episode

Host: Matt Turck

Guest: Zico Kolter

Topics covered

• AI safety
• AI security
• frontier AI
• model releases
• AI governance
• machine learning

Keywords

• OpenAI
• AI agents
• jailbreaks
• prompt injection
• AI risk categories
• reinforcement learning
• AI pause debate

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OpenAI, Carnegie Mellon, Gray Swan

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